TUSTIN, Calif., October 17, 2016 – Andrew Technologies, LLC today announced that for the first time in the history of surgery, it has safely extracted mesenteric visceral fat in mammals, using the company’s proprietary Tissue Liquefaction Technology™ (TLT). These visceral lipectomy successes mark a positive start to the company’s proof of concept for a procedure that has the potential to reverse type 2 diabetes.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), diabetes is the seventh leading cause of death in the United States. Diabetes affects 29.1 million Americans, or 9.3% of the population, and 1.4 million Americans are newly diagnosed with diabetes each year. Some 86 million Americans aged 20 or older have prediabetes, which places them at greater risk for developing type 2 diabetes and other health problems. The World Health Organization describes the prevalence of diabetes as a global epidemic.
In the fight against the epidemic of diabetes, safe removal of visceral fat may present a new weapon. Visceral fat is metabolically active fat that surrounds the kidneys and other organs and collects in the mesentery (the connective tissue around the intestines), and may cause type 2 diabetes and other diseases. There is convincing scientific evidence that the presence of excess visceral fat is highly correlated with a greater risk of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, NASH, high blood pressure, stroke, Alzheimer’s and many other disorders. The medical community has postulated for decades that removal of sufficient quantities of this metabolically active visceral fat might reverse the risk of some or all of these diseases. The mesentery contains the largest depot of visceral fat, and may have the strongest correlation with metabolic disease progression. However, research in this area has been confounded because surgeons have been unable to safely remove these fatty deposits, which contain significant blood vessels and nerves and lie in close proximity to vital organs and structures.
Dr. Mark S. Andrew, founder and CSO of Andrew Technologies, led the surgical team and stated, “In this study, we were able to show that non-cutting TLT liquefies visceral fat with target tissue specificity. Using TLT, we performed visceral lipectomy in three baboons without damage to the abdominal organs, blood vessels or the mesenteric sheath. This advance has exciting potential implications for future treatment of millions of patients with type 2 diabetes.”
Dr. Derek Huffman, Assistant Professor of Molecular Pharmacology and Medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York added “Over the past 15 years, our research team has been particularly focused on the role of visceral fat and its complications, particularly as it relates to insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, cancer and aging. It is now well recognized among researchers and clinicians that visceral fat is an important risk factor for diabetes and other diseases, but there has been no way to safely remove it from the mesentery.”
Dr. Richard M. Peterson, Chief of Bariatric and Metabolic Surgery at UT Health Science Center in San Antonio, TX, added, “It has been exciting to be part of this study, which demonstrated surgical capabilities with TLT that simply have not been available to us in the past. Following safe removal of visceral fat, the baboons have shown no ill effects in the recovery period, they’re doing just fine. I look forward to exploring the technology’s capabilities further as we move through the next stages of research.”
Andrew Technologies will continue to provide updates on its research into using TLT for visceral lipectomy. Full results of the primate study will be published in a peer-reviewed journal in 2017.
About Andrew Technologies, LLC
Andrew Technologies, LLC, is a privately funded medical technology company founded in 2007 and committed to improving patients’ lives through precision surgery based on Tissue Liquefaction Technology™. The first device using this new approach to surgery was AquaLase, launched by Alcon in 2003 for cataract surgery. Andrew Technologies received FDA clearance for HydraSolve, the second TLT device, in 2012. HydraSolve is primarily used to transfer fat for breast reconstruction following breast cancer treatment and for aesthetic body contouring www.hydrasolve.com. In addition to HydraSolve, Andrew has an impressive research pipeline that includes minimally invasive surgery to correct type 2 diabetes and adipose stem cell treatments.
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Amy Phillips
Pascale Communications
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